Thomas Wright's Universe Poster

Plates XVII and XXXI from Thomas Wright's An Original Theory or New Hypothesis of the Universe... (1750), his best known work in which he explains the appearance of the Milky Way as "an optical effect due to our immersion in what locally approximates to a flat layer of stars" and also postulates that many faint nebulae are in fact incredibly distant galaxies. As part of his explications of heavenly workings he emphasised that the Earth and the human race are insignificant and transitory parts of a vast universe, that "In this great Celestial Creation, the Catastrophy of a World, such as ours, or even the total Dissolution of a System of Worlds, may possibly be no more to the great Author of Nature, than the most common Accident in Life with us, and in all Probability such final and general DoomsDays may be as frequent there, as even Birth-Days or Mortality with us upon this Earth."